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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26511697">The New Jersey Style of Software Design &amp; Implementation</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/toadsage/pseuds/kobrakush'>kobrakush (toadsage)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>you should bow your head in shame [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Comic)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Canon, Autistic Character, BLI Worldbuilding, Battery City, Character Study, Character(s) of Color, Complicated Relationships, Disabled Character, Fictional Religion &amp; Theology, M/M, Multi, POC Fab Four, Pre-Killjoys (Danger Days), Unhealthy Relationships, Worldbuilding, Zones Religion and Lore (Fabulous Killjoys)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 03:08:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,521</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26511697</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/toadsage/pseuds/kobrakush</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The New Jersey Style, also known as <b>"Worse is Better"</b>, refers to the claim that quality does not necessarily increase with functionality—that there is a point where less functionality ("worse") is a preferable option ("better") in terms of practicality and usability. —Wikipedia</p><p>Also known as: the Killjoys had made their lives in the Zones. They were a fixture, now, with a reputation that was longer than their shadow. They didn't want anything to change, except maybe for their reputations to grow even larger. Instead, Kobra's past meets them out in the Zones and promptly carks it, which sets off a chain of events that screws them over.</p><p>Also known as: Axel needs to stop setting off bombs to try and impress his crush, Teo. Teo's got to deal with a new hire, Christie, before he transfers to the Panopticon to keep a better eye on his boyfriend, Korse. Christie's running from the Director and her spies, and hates everything about his job until he meets an exciting sewer rat. And Fun Ghoul should know better than to involve himself in the affairs of BLI drones.</p><p>Also known as: when four guys leave Battery City for a new life in the Zones, why they returned, and how they became legends.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Fun Ghoul/Jet Star (Danger Days), Fun Ghoul/Kobra Kid (Danger Days), Jet Star/Party Poison (Danger Days), Korse/Party Poison (Danger Days)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>you should bow your head in shame [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1927612</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The New Jersey Style of Software Design &amp; Implementation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>welcome to the first installation of my godverse series! i have been working on this story since 2014, but finally gotten the nerve to write it up and post it. hold a gun to my head and make me finish it!</p><p>none of the fab four are based on MCR in this fic. pp is black/indian, kk is south east asian, fg is japanese/white, and js is mixed indigenous, black and puerto rican. this fic is also quite dark, so TW for emotionally abusive/complicated relationships, brainwashing, canon typical violence, human experimentation, and drug use. otherwise i hope you enjoy!</p><p>the title for chapter 1 comes from the kneecap song C.E.A.R.T.A, and translates to "You won't see me standing here too long."</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“Jesus fucking Christ!” Party scowled as he strode into the diner, slamming the door behind him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The fuck got </span>
  <em>
    <span>your </span>
  </em>
  <span>panties in a twist?” Kobra asked, his head popping up from between Ghoul’s thighs, neck craning to look at Party from around the edge of the booth. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I </span>
  <em>
    <span>told </span>
  </em>
  <span>you fuckers to stop having sex in the goddamn front of the diner in the middle of the fucking day! For God’s sake, Jet is </span>
  <em>
    <span>right there!” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Party screeched, his voice creeping up into the decibel range that Jet knew would signal his weekly bitch-out. Jet wasn’t really feeling this today. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ghoul snorted, and he caught Jet’s eye as if to say </span>
  <em>
    <span>I can’t believe we put up with this. </span>
  </em>
  <span>“It’s not like he hasn’t seen it before. For that matter, it’s not like you haven’t seen my pussy, either.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Party spluttered with rage, that just made Kobra laugh at him, loud and mean. Kobra’s long fingers slid out from Ghoul’s cunt, resting just above where Ghoul’s jeans bunched up around his knees, and he quirked an eyebrow so it rose just above his rose gold polarised aviators. Kobra’s mean laugh had a way of making its target feel small and insignificant, like they were a stupid dog that constantly ran into glass doors because they couldn’t fathom how they worked, and Jet knew it set Party off more than anything. Poison couldn’t stand to feel like he was being made fun of. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’re not even fucking,” Kobra drawled, “Ghoul’s got a fucking massive pimple on his vag that he can’t pop by himself. We’ve been trying to get it to drain for the past ten.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That </span>
  </em>
  <span>piques Party’s interest, and he wanders over to get a better look. Jet knows Party’s a little irritated Ghoul didn’t wait ‘til Party got home — they all know how much Party loves to pop zits. Usually they save any particularly juicy ones for him, and he squeals with excitement whenever he gets a breakout. This one is a good one, too. Jet’s seen it. It’s quite large, pulsing white against the darker skin of Ghoul’s pubic mound, a creamy mountain nestled among his wiry pubes. It’s in one of the worst possible places Jet can imagine for a pimple: right up at the edge of his labia, in a spot that’s difficult for him to see by himself. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Looks painful,” Party commented, peering down to get a closer look. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know, right?” Jet interjected, finally putting his magazine down, “It’s kind of sick. Ghoul’s been complaining all morning.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You guys are the worst fucking gossips,” Ghoul huffs, and hisses in pain when Kobra digs his nails against the zit in another attempt to pop it. “Don’t you have anything better to do? There must be someone’s day you haven’t ruined yet, Posion.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Are you still being a bitch about that?” Poison rolled his eyes, and Jet goes back to his magazine. Ah fuck. They’re going to go in on each other now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was twenty fucking carbons worth of shrooms, you asshole, of course I’m still fucking pissed! I can’t believe you dumped them in the BLI trash compactor! Not even given to the goddamn witch!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not exactly going to commit heresy to please your brain rotted fever dreams, Ghoul, get the fuck over it. If anything, you should be thanking me. I did you a favour.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You did me a </span>
  <em>
    <span>favour?” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Ghoul’s voice grew louder, and Jet tugged his magazine even closer to his face. He does not want to get in the middle of this. “I didn’t ask you for any! Twenty fucking carbons! Kid and I had a </span>
  <em>
    <span>great </span>
  </em>
  <span>fucking ritual planned, and you’ve fucking ruined it!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Party responds like he’s explaining this to a child, slow and patronising. It’s like he </span>
  <em>
    <span>wants </span>
  </em>
  <span>to wind Ghoul off, except Jet knows that Party wouldn’t choose to have fun unless someone put a gun to his head and told him to. “Because aiding your stupid ‘ceremonies’ is exactly what is going to make me feel guilty for helping you. I’m not sorry. You’re doing BLI’s work for them, trading carbons for drugs. You should go get a job at the Peg’, live your life the way you clearly want to: doped up and worshipping the false god of instant pleasure.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kobra just got up, not saying anything, and shouldered past Party. He wandered into the kitchen, and Ghoul took that as his cue to leave as well. He tugged his pants back up and knocked Party into the side of the booth, storming to the door, before he stopped. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re the only one here who loves BLI, Poison. You love their drugs and their jobs. Don’t project that onto me,” he said, his voice low and furious, and he continued out into the beating sunshine. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jet laughed, turning the page of his magazine. They’re both so dramatic. Still, it was a fucking good closing jab, Jet has to give him that. “You know, he does have a point.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t you dare fucking say that,” Party growled, stomping over to Jet and snatching the magazine out of his hands. His scowl is the exact same scowl he had when he was sobering up, getting clean from the cocktail of BLI drugs he’d been on in the city and the pain of leaving his boyfriend and his power behind. It’s the exact same way Party grit his teeth and turned to Jet and decided to leave, pledging to never return. It was a blast from the fucking past, the exact same scrunch of his nose that had hit Jet in the stomach like a Drac getting a few punches in as they arrest him, and Jet had realised that whatever he </span>
  <em>
    <span>had</span>
  </em>
  <span> felt for Party wasn’t really love, because </span>
  <em>
    <span>this</span>
  </em>
  <span> was it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t play that way, babe,” Jet grinned, his mouth opening up to reveal a row of pearly whites. “You know I love you when you’re all drugged up and sterilised. You’re pretty when you’re bleeding from the coke.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re sick. You make me sick.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And </span>
  <em>
    <span>you’re </span>
  </em>
  <span>repressed. Aren’t you all about freedom, now? That’s what I’m here to fight for with you. Ghoul was only a sewer rat, he never had nearly the same intake you and I did. If he and Kobra want to do shrooms and sing songs in the desert, what’s the harm?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The </span>
  <em>
    <span>harm </span>
  </em>
  <span>is that they’re rotting their brains! All this,” Party waved his hands around maniacally, “All </span>
  <em>
    <span>this </span>
  </em>
  <span>is about ignoring reality! Distracting yourself from the harsh truths of life! The movement isn’t about the right to rot your brain with drugs — that’s what BLI is happy for you to do. Those are all illusions. The illusion of autonomy, but really you’re a slave to your own pleasure. You become a slave to the chemicals, and you still aren’t making your own choices.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Where do we draw the line, Party? C’mon. Art does the same thing — art lets us ignore reality and feel pleasure. Philosophy is practically </span>
  <em>
    <span>the</span>
  </em>
  <span> exercise in ignoring the world as it is and fantasising on it as it could be. How can you say you want Ghoul to make his own choices when you take his choice away from him?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jet can pinpoint the exact moment when he gets to Party. Party’s always been terrible at hiding his emotions. For as long as Jet has known him, Party has been a completely open book. Even when he was all doped up, reading him was like reading the billboards that advertise on the MTR in BatCit: easy, beautiful, blank. He was angry and humiliated by Jet’s logic, because he knew Jet had a point, and he was too proud to acknowledge it. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>hated </span>
  </em>
  <span>when Jet sat down and methodically tore through all of his beautiful words and beliefs like he was an ultra classified document and Jet was a paper shredder. Jet watched Party debate between flouncing off in a huff and trying to defend his actions; when Kobra appeared from the back room, holding a lighter, a joint, and a sewing needle. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Where’s Ghoul gone?” he asked, like he had no idea the rest of them were arguing. Perhaps he didn’t — Jet could never tell when Kobra was really clueless or just pretending to be. “I was going to try and drain it with this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stormed off,” Party said, at the same time Jet said: “Isn’t doing that technically surgery?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Huh,” replied Kobra, already sounding like he’d checked out of the conversation entirely. “Wouldn’t be my first. I’m sure this will be easier than brain surgery,” and just fucks off out the front door, presumably to try and find Ghoul. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jet and Party both watched him leave in complete silence, the only sound being the clunk of Kobra’s boots against the diner floor, and the soft rattle of the old door frame.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You think he’s actually done brain surgery?” Jet asked. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Party laughed, and shook his head. “No fucking way. When he started at Data I was saddled with him, had to show him around and shit. He entered as a ‘droid project leader, though, had at least clearance 3 when he began. No way is he old enough to have been on a med track before switching into Data with that clearance.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Honestly, then, if you should be worried about any of our brains rotting on drugs, it’s his.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I keep throwing his out,” Party admitted, “but he never says anything. Just shows up the next day with more. You have to admire how fucking unshakeable that kid is.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What a weird motherfucker. Also, remind me to talk to you later about saving money by at the very </span>
  <em>
    <span>least </span>
  </em>
  <span>selling off Ghoul and KK’s stashes. Carbons don’t grow on trees, you know, but I can’t be fucked to try and fathom why someone with multiple math qualifications can’t understand the way you’re jacking up our coffers.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, yeah,” Party said, clearly not taking Jet seriously. This isn’t the first conversation Jet had tried to have with Party about his flippant relationship with money, and it certainly won’t be the last.  “Let’s go service the Trans Am while we wait for them to finish fucking.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jet wasn’t worried about Ghoul and Party making up. They’ll probably get into tomorrow, fight and then make out until Jet catches them, and then Party will look guilty about being turned on and run off, and then Ghoul will complain about being horny until Jet fucks him. Jet really thought running off to become a terrorist would be all excitement and fun, but to be honest, a lot of it is way more boring than his job back in the City.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Kobra had worn glasses since Party had first met him. He had never actually seen Kobra’s eyes — Kobra always kept them covered by whichever obnoxiously large and very opaque frames he could. In the city he had always worn next gen smart glasses, the kind that cost an unfathomable number of carbons, (the mid tier ones sold at a price that even Party, in all his upper middle class opulence, had gawked at).</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Since they’d gotten to the zones, Kobra’s taste in glasses had been forcibly downgraded, but he still spent a stupid number of carbons on new novelty glasses from swap meets and Tommy’s. At this point, Poison was pretty sure Kobra actually had first dibs on any new stock of sunnies to turn up at Chow Mein’s little attempt at a general store, just because Kobra </span>
  <em>
    <span>had </span>
  </em>
  <span>to have dinky plastic shades in the shape of hearts, palm trees, or olden day emojis.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>So it was weird to see Kobra kiss his new girl goodbye with his glasses perched up on top of his head. This new girlfriend was definitely a plus-addled droid, her body disintegrating in the manner that all Zone droids do, her synthetic once-bright yellow hair now stained with Zone grime and desperation. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She kissed Kobra like he was her everything, like he was her entire world, like if he let go of her, she would simply slip out of this plane of existence. That’s not unusual: Party knows Kobra’s a good fuck, most of the Zones are aware of that fact. What </span>
  <em>
    <span>was </span>
  </em>
  <span>unusual is how tender Kobra is with her. These were not just the flirty kisses Kobra usually goes for when he’s just playing to pass the time, and not the dirty kisses Kobra leans into when he wants to get laid. They weren’t even the thankful kisses he shares when they’ve just escaped their deaths by the skin of their teeth and the ghosts of their past lives are still burned on the back of their eyelids. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s none of those things. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kobra kissed her tenderly, like he loves her. He held her hips like she’s someone special to him. The pang of jealousy hit Poison </span>
  <em>
    <span>hard, </span>
  </em>
  <span>because even though Poison is the reason Kobra left the city, even though their gang are the people Kobra returns to at the end of the night, Kobra has never been this close to them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Party knows he has Jet. He knows he has Ghoul. He can trust that he’s got the two of them twisted around his little finger, dancing on the end of the strings he’s pulling. They know they are too, and it’s a symbiotic parasocial relationship that works for them. He doesn’t have the same with Kobra. Kobra had never been as open with Party as he was with this droid he’s known for less than a month. Kobra had never been vulnerable with them the way he was vulnerable with this random fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>droid </span>
  </em>
  <span>and it made Party feel sick. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Party wanted to see that vulnerability. Party wanted to dig his fingers in it and pull it out and examine it and put it back in the way </span>
  <em>
    <span>he </span>
  </em>
  <span>saw fit. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kobra gave the droid a final, </span>
  <em>
    <span>sweet, </span>
  </em>
  <span>kiss goodbye, and flipped his shades back down over his eyes before he hopped into the Trans Am. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thanks for picking me up,” he said, his voice as emotionless and monotone as it was the first time Party had met him. Party wondered if he spoke the same with the Yellow. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No worries,” Party mumbled, and started the car, nearly stalling it in his haste to speed off.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Careful there,” Kobra said, and Party chanced a look at him from the corner of his eye. He could almost be smiling at Party, but that could also be a trick of the light. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Who was she?” Party asked, trying to be polite. “You’ve seen her a couple times, now. Unusual for you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>From Kobra’s response, it was clear that Party wasn’t nearly as cool as he thought he was. “We don’t have to talk about her if you don’t want to.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s considerate. Kobra knows Party doesn’t care for his dalliances with droids, because they’d had a huge blowout about it a few months ago. Well, as huge as an argument with Kobra can be, which isn’t very. Party thought it was horrifically exploitative, a continuation of the exploitation of the city even when they were meant to be better than that. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The droids, in many ways, were the epitome of BLI’s moral corruption: that they could build consciousness, and then sell the bodies of the people they’d made at prices as low as an hour of Poison’s entry level salary made him ill. Droids were the pinnacle of everything wrong with BLI and its agenda of instant gratification, and it was even more abhorrent to him that droids could escape to the zones and still be subject to the same kinds of exploitation they’d experience in the city, just in a different flavour. Forced to do the exact same thing — sell their bodies for Plus, just in an even grimier locale than the Lobby.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That argument was the most emotional Poison had ever seen Kobra. Kobra’s mouth had twisted into a small, thin line, white with how tight he had pressed his lips together. He’d just stood stock still, taken all of Party’s ranting and raving and abuse, and when Party was finished, had just said: “I need to do this. This is who I am. The droids mean a lot to me. Don’t ask me to choose.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was the closest Party had ever gotten to seeing Kobra stand up for himself. He had conceded. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“No, I want to know about her. What’s her name?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Huang,” Kobra said, pronouncing the tone carefully so Party could pick up on the foreign language. It sounded different from the Japlish they normally spoke, and the way he pronounced the word made it clear that this foreign language was something special to him. “She also goes by Bomb Baby, but she doesn’t mind either.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Zonerunner name, huh? Unusual, for a droid.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She’s not a usual droid.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Damn, you’re really into her, huh?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What do you mean?” he asked, frowning, like he didn’t even understand what Poison was trying to say. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Into her… like in love, I guess. She’s special to you. You’re dating, aren’t you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Dating? No way! She’s definitely not into me like that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You guys were making out pretty intensely, dude. You’re not exactly subtle with your affections.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Seriously. Not in love. Droids just greet their close friends like that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So you spend all night with a droid, you end the day with five minutes of making out, and you think I’m going to buy that y’all aren’t fucking? Just because I don’t do that anymore doesn’t mean I don’t know anything about it. Come off it."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Seriously. Why would I lie about it? You know I fuck plenty. She needs help with her procedurals &amp; neuronet chip. We spent most of the night debugging, nothing even especially exciting.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You skipped out on the Mad Gear show with Jet and Ghoul to spend the night debugging some droid you’re not even fucking? That’s pretty fucking crazy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kobra shrugged. “I like it. I don’t get to do it much anymore. I’m good at it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m good at debugging too, but I don’t really fucking miss it. After refactoring, it was easily the worst part of coding.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No offence, Poison, but what droids run on is hardly fucking MapReduce. Any idiot could do Data in his sleep.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And that’s why you transferred into Data under me, huh?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah. Wanted a break after I was pushed out of Expe.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Poison nearly stalled the car out of shock. He’d never known what Kobra’d done before he’d transferred into Data, right before Party had left the division for the Panopticon. The Experimental divisions were legendary, even among the BLI worker drones. So little was known about them, even the members of Expe were kept under lock and key. The work they did was so highly confidential that the Level 3 classification would have been a significant downgrade for KK. Expe wasn’t anything like R&amp;D — it had nothing to do with the R&amp;D facilities at all. Poison had only ever heard </span>
  <em>
    <span>rumors </span>
  </em>
  <span>about what Expe did, and even then, he was sure most of those were lies made up by Expe themselves. What ones remained were probably lies made up by the Panopticon. Party sure as fuck manufactured some of them. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You were in Expe?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah. Did you not know?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You never said.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I thought you’d worked it out. Especially when you moved to the Panopticon.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I guess… I never knew what to think. R&amp;D, maybe. I guess I never thought about it too deeply. I didn’t care about you too much until we got out of the city, and by then it didn’t matter.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I see.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They sat in silence, both ignoring the awkward tension in the car, just watching the flat planes of the desert stretch out in front of them. The scenery around here always looked uncomfortably empty. Unlike the manufactured and structured blankness of the city, one would think they’d prefer the parts of the desert that were still untouched. In the city, though, emptiness was by design. It was controllable, and easily fixable. Out in the desert, the lack of anything for miles on end was suffocating. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“So, you did droid stuff in Expe?” Poison asked, anything to fill the lull in conversation. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Something like that,” Kobra replied, noncommittally. “A mix of bio-engineering and software engineering. It was a small, cross disciplinary team.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why did you leave?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hm… It’s hard to explain. I didn’t want to. But I would have gotten into shit sooner rather than later. The Director wanted me out of Level 7 altogether. Taking a Data role got the heat off my back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The Director herself?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So I hear. She never said anything explicitly, but you know BLI. She didn’t have to.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is that why you came with us?” Poison pressed, curious. He’d never understood why Kobra had so readily jumped at the chance to leave Battery City, especially when he was not naturally an especially rebellious person. For everything Kobra does — the drinking, the drugs, the partying, the sex — Party had never really thought Kobra had a genuine need to do it. He does it because he wants to, sure, but it’s some means to a different end. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nah, I was just bored.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Really?” Pretty stupid reason to become a wanted criminal. “You were bored.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kobra shrugged. “You know Data. Leading the droid teams is one of the most boring jobs, and Data isn’t exactly exciting at its best. And I had no career progression, not if the Director had it out for me. Being here sucks, sure, but at least there’s a bit of excitement.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey! Should I feel offended that I’m your second choice?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That made Kobra smile. “I like you, Party. You’re interesting. More than I thought you’d be.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Now I’m really offended.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is what it is. It’s cool to watch you work. You’re a very good manipulator.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Party gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. He didn’t like how Kobra was willing to just put it down like that, recognising that he knows what Party’s up to. People weren’t just supposed to </span>
  <em>
    <span>notice </span>
  </em>
  <span>that. He’d clearly underestimated Kobra in more ways than one.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yeah?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah. I like being manipulated by you. It’s fun.”</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Kobra went along to Ghoul’s worships because Ghoul came along to Kobra’s. Kobra wasn’t sure if he believed in the Witch </span>
  <em>
    <span>or </span>
  </em>
  <span>DESTROYA, but DESTROYA’s worships were the best place to meet droids, and Witch worships were always a good time. DESTROYA worships were a mishmash of software updates and repairs, orgies, live music, hackathons, and philosophy conferences. They lasted for days on end, around the clock, until whoever started it decided it was done. There was no real rhyme or reason to when and where DESTROYA would be worshipped, only that it would happen when someone needed it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even before Kobra had attended his first Witch worship, he knew they were radically different. From what Kobra had gathered, Ghoul had been attending Witch ceremonies for a long time, even as a sewer rat back in the city. Kobra hadn’t realised how connected sewer rats were to the zonerunners until he came out with Ghoul to these things and saw for himself how well liked and welcomed Ghoul was. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Pretty much the second Kobra had brought his bike to a stop in the little area designated as a parking lot, Ghoul had hopped off and started running towards the worshippers that had already gathered at the communal gardens in Zone 7. Show Pony and Hot Chimp were here tonight, Kobra could see their cars further along, and Kobra was glad. He was at the very least friendly with them. The others were nice, Kobra knew, but Kobra knew how to interact with Pony and Chimp. They knew he wasn’t much of a conversationalist and didn’t expect him to be — they were happy enough letting him trail around in their wake while Ghoul partied it up in the centre of the action. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Kid!” Ghoul shouted, the scars on his lips stretching and warping from his wide grin, “Come meet Betel Joose and Zircon Zeke! You missed them last time, but they really wanted to pick your brain about your new etch-a-hack!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kobra walked up to them, raising a hand in greeting, but not saying anything. He didn’t like talking to strangers, even if they were Ghoul’s friends. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you guys be nice to my buddy Kobra here, he might sell you a new etch-a-hack.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hiya Kobra!” Betel Joose greeted him, holding their hand out to shake. An undergrad, then, although they were pretty good at blending in otherwise until they’d opened their mouth. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey,” Zeke added, and Kobra understood. Either Zeke was smarter or been in the desert for longer than Joose, but clearly had been trying to school Joose in the ways of the desert and fitting in. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You guys want an etch-a-hack,” Kobra said, “find something Jet Star wants. You trade him for it at Cherri’s next swap meet. I’ll let him know.” Kobra wouldn’t usually be even that helpful — he erred on the side of Jet’s miser tendencies over Party’s bleeding heart — but Ghoul had looked at him with pleading, puppy dog eyes, and Kobra knew that was the sort of thing that was supposed to make his icy heart melt. They were probably a plug, then, or with something else Ghoul wanted enough to try and keep them in his good graces. Ghoul’s attempts to become the top supplier of weed in the zones were an eternal source of entertainment for Jet and Kobra, who would bet on which hilarious bit of bad luck would befall Ghoul next. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Witch worships in the Zone 7 gardens always followed the same format. They began with Desert Worm, the Witch’s Voice in this section of the desert, giving a sermon. Unlike other Voices, Worm wasn’t especially verbose, and for that Kobra was thankful. Worm talked for ten minutes about death and rebirth and community and not being too much of a cunt, all the usual shit for a Worship but kept succinct. After he’d gone through the announcements and welcomed the newcomers to their commune, he began the most important part of a Witch worship: the Call to beyond. The Call was partially a memorial, partially a forgetting, and partially a group therapy session. Anyone who wanted to honour the dusted or ghosted were welcome to speak or otherwise memorialise those they had lost. Some of those who spoke did so so often that Kobra knew their memorials by heart. Lady Danger always burned a cactus flower for Viperess, Zip Zap always recited the same poem for Zoom and Lick Rot, Camp Cope sang the same a capella song and cried for the same length of five minutes and twelve seconds. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Still, KK squeezed Ghoul’s hand when the parts of the memorial that still rubbed Ghoul raw began, like when Desert Worm began talking about Teeth Meal decomposing into compost and Stick tried not to cry over his crew that got Drac’d. Stick’s eulogy gets everyone, in the end. Everyone in the Zones is terrified of that what-if, the horrible fable of the team that gets got, everyone except you. This potential future of the day when you have to stare down your ray gun at the people you once loved, and you have to choose between killing them or killing yourself because there’s no way either of you can continue on like this and something has to give because the Witch has decreed you cannot continue in this world together as you are. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s every zonerunner’s nightmare. It’s worse than dying or getting ghosted, because either way at least you don’t have to deal with the fallout. It’s easy to stop existing. It’s harder to choose to go on. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The memorial ends like it always does, on a somber note, and they shift into the clumps of chores they need to complete to tend the gardens. Worm and his crew do most of the work, and the fields are always in good nick, but they save the big jobs for Witch worships to get a good number of hands on deck. Kobra gets stuck on weeding, like he always does, because he doesn’t mind it and everyone else detests it. Ghoul dipped off the second Worm stepped down from the little makeshift stage, probably to help Worm with his planning. Ghoul’s green thumb is legendary, and Worm always wants to pick his brain on the best ways to improve their food production. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Chimp filled the spot Ghoul left, like she usually does, because she always wants to pick Kobra’s mind on gossip. Party’s got a bit of a reputation for himself, on account of him trying his desperate best to build one without seeming too obvious about it; Jet’s got a rep for his engineering; Ghoul sells the best weed. People mostly know Kobra for being in Party’s periphery, or the party animals know him because they’ve probably hooked up with him at one point or another. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Surprised to see you still here,” Chimp said, and Kobra shrugged. “Heard Ghoul was getting involved in one of Cherri’s schemes to attack the city directly.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kobra hadn’t heard that, but he was hardly Ghoul’s keeper. He wasn’t the most trusted of the four, by anyone in the Zones but the droids. Sometimes Party and Jet didn't even tell him about the plans they had for the Killjoys until it was time to execute them. Chimp should know better than to look for gossip from him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not my business.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Really? Still fronting like that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t know what you want me to say, Chimp. If you want hot Party goss, tune in to News-a-Gogo’s show. She seems to know a lot more than I do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kobra likes weeding because it’s monotonous. If people leave him alone he can shut off, do it automatically while he’s running algorithms in the back of his mind. He can go into a different plane of existence that’s hard to do when he has to be </span>
  <em>
    <span>on </span>
  </em>
  <span>and perform in front of others. Most people go to Witch worships to get high, because after the hard labour they usually have some kind of party that involves as many hallucinogens as people can scrounge together, but Kobra likes a different sort of high he gets here. When his muscles are bone-deep exhausted and his mind can float up into space, grounded only by the ache in his fingers as he digs into the soil to pull up a scratchy little zone weed that’s threatening to poison their food supply.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Chimp just won’t leave him the fuck alone. “That’s just because she lets Poison preach on her frequency, everyone knows that. He gives her first dibs on any updates.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let him preach on yours, then.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No fucking way. Did you know he’s got a little group of followers out in Zone 3? They go around trying to convert people outside Fuck You shows and in Chow Mein’s store. Tommy’s about to dust Poison himself just because of that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not my problem.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Weird how Poison hates everyone in the Zones using, except for you. People say he’s a hypocrite.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Seriously, not my problem.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t care about your crew’s rep?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not my crew.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Have you stopped running with them? But I saw you with Ghoul earlier…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We have a working relationship. I explain this to you every fucking month. I run alone.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Bullshit.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So glad I have you to tell me who I do and don’t run with. Thanks, Chimp, whatever would I do without you? I certainly wouldn’t have figured it out by myself.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I would be more inclined to believe you ran alone if you didn’t fucking live and work with them, asshole. You do this every time, and it doesn’t get more convincing with age.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not my problem, Chimp. You think what you want to. I really don’t fucking care.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fucking hell. You’re more emotionally repressed than your man Poison, and he keeps getting on the airwaves to tell people to stop fucking. Finish your patch and let’s go drop some fucking acid like goddamn adults.”</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>When Ghoul entered the old motel room they’d converted into a workshop, Jet ignored him. He only looked up when he’d finished soldering the control panel for what Ghoul assumed was a remote-activated detonator, and had cleaned his soldering iron off. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They gone?” Jet asked, and pulled his work gloves off. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ghoul nodded and sat down beside Jet, slinging an arm around Jet’s shoulders. “Yeah. Drove off ten minutes ago. Shouldn’t be back for a while yet.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jet rolled his neck around its socket, slowly stretching out the tight tendons in shoulders, eyes closed in a facsimile of bliss as he popped each individual joint. “Thank fuck. Party can’t keep wearing those fucking jeans around me. I won’t be responsible for what I do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What? Cry about your crush on him and then jerk off guiltily until your dick’s raw?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck off…” Jet knocked into Ghoul’s shoulder and scowled, but he wasn’t especially intimidating like that, and Ghoul wasn’t impressed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s true. Last time I saw Show Pony, they told me to tell you that they’ve got some Zone ice cream to cry your woes into.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Please. Like you don’t want to fuck him as much as I do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay, I’ll bite. Sure, I want to fuck Party. I’m sure Kobra wants to fuck Party, although Kobra would fuck anything that sat still enough for him to get his dick in, so maybe that isn’t an especially convincing point. But you’re the only person sitting here spending your Thursday making bomb detonators because you like the way Party’s eyes sparkle when you rig up an especially destructive explosion.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jet shrugged, and stared back at Ghoul. “You’re here to help me though, aren’t you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ghoul hated it when Jet was right. “Yeah, fuck. Pass me a soldering iron, motherfucker.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Both Jet and Ghoul had worked on these dozens of times before, using repurposed circuit boards that Kobra had scavenged and stripped. It brought Ghoul back to their days in the City, where the only thing they had in common was their love of explosions and their desire to see BLI burn. The circuit boards were simple enough to produce, just a matter of linking up the actual detonators to the timers or signal receivers, and working on them was its own form of meditation. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Those jeans are going to fucking kill me, one day,” Jet announced, apropos of nothing, “I am going to get dusted because I’m too busy staring at his fucking ass and a drac is gonna get a lucky shot in.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I fucking know. Like fuck my life, why does he have to squish his ass into the tightest fucking pants he can possibly find if he’s not even going to put out? If being Catholic makes your ass so tight you can bounce a goddamn transistor off it, I’ll read the fucking Bible.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“At least in the city, I thought I had a chance. Like sure, I was competing with Korse, but like. It was </span>
  <em>
    <span>Korse. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Motherfucker was a goddamn Exterminator! Good chance he would die within the week. Here, however, he’s gotten into his mind that he’s just not fucking anymore. Not even dating! I think I could handle a kiss every so often, as long as I got one. I think my dick is going to wither and fall off.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’s a good kisser, too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I will gut you like a goddamn synthetic fish. Don’t try me.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Ghoul stuck his tongue out at Jet, and when Jet brandished his soldering iron threateningly in response, licked Jet’s cheek. His stubble was raspy and harsh against Ghoul’s tongue, long enough to be uncomfortable but not long enough to have gone soft yet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t cry yourself to sleep tonight, okay? I’m sure he’ll kiss you in your dreams.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll kiss </span>
  <em>
    <span>you </span>
  </em>
  <span>in </span>
  <em>
    <span>your </span>
  </em>
  <span>dreams,” Jet threatened, “you won’t even know what’s coming.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean, hopefully I will be coming, if it’s the kind of dream of mine that you usually star in,” Ghoul teased, giving Jet an exaggerated wink.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jet spluttered, turning red in embarrassment. He was strangely virginal for a guy who ate puss like a champ. Ghoul figured it was upper City brain rot, that or Party’s celibacy talks had gotten to the guy. Ghoul hoped Jet would get well soon. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jet passed Ghoul a blueprint sketch, propping it up in front of Ghoul’s workstation. “You want to attach these ones here and here, and put the grounding there. These are the ones Cherri asked for, I think he’ll probably rope you into whatever he’s planning. You’re much better at demo than he is, so don’t let me pass these off to him if you don’t at the very least check his plans. I’ll forget, otherwise.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh huh. Sure thing, babes. Though I’m sure you wouldn’t mind if he dusted himself, eh? Less competition?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck off. You’re so single minded about this. I don’t get it — you like Cherri. I mean, fuck. If I got with Party you’d lose a fuckbuddy. What gets you so invested in us?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Ghoul doesn’t have a good answer for that. He fixed the grounding onto the circuit board, trying to stall while he came up with a good enough response. He doesn’t know. There are all the easy answers, that he cares for Jet or that he just wants them to be happy. Those aren’t satisfactory lies, and they certainly don’t scratch the truth of the matter.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know. It gives me hope, I guess. Maybe he’ll give me some of that attention. Or I can at least live vicariously through you,” he said, instead. It was the truth — probably too much of it. It made him feel sick.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Info always had its way of getting around the Zones to them. It had been nearly two years since they left the city — green compared to some of the lifers — but Poison’s proselytizing, Kobra’s sex drive, Ghoul’s explosions and Jet’s engineering had been a deadly combo for growing their rep. They certainly weren’t surprised to hear through the airwaves that someone was waiting for them, but it </span>
  <em>
    <span>was </span>
  </em>
  <span>surprising that the only thing they knew about this person was that they were waiting at Dr. D’s. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jet thinks Poison’s a bleeding heart, and hates how insistent Poison always is on doing charity. He wasn’t so much into Party’s ideology of community spirit and caritas, but Jet trusted the Doctor more than anyone else in the Zones. Whoever wanted their help was smart — Poison would give them that. They knew how to optimise their chances, and get the Four intrigued enough to roll out. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Show Pony was out front of the station when Poison pulled up in the Trans Am, spinning around in slow circles on their skates. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Took you long enough!” they greeted the group, “your telegram was about to skedaddle!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Bit paranoid,” Ghoul remarked. They’d received the missive two nights ago, when they were out doing work in the tar pits of Zone 4. Even if they’d gunned it over, it still would have been a solid night of high speed driving to get to the station. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She’s a jumpy little bunny, cool cats, but I think you’ll be happy you rocked up. She’s got a great story, even the fiction has been entertainin’ enough for the Doctor an’ I.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Well, fuck. Now Poison was </span>
  <em>
    <span>really </span>
  </em>
  <span>intrigued. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Pony ushered them all into the radio station, which was as clutter as ever. Not disorganised — Party would never insult the good Doctor like that — but definitely not the kind of room you’d find anywhere around the CBD or northern parts of the City. Between the radio tech and the stacks of records overflowing the crates they’d meant to be organised in, Party was surprised that there was enough space for the Doctor and Pony to move around. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Doctor was at his usual spot, sitting by his mixing board and mic, but on his small guest couch there was a woman in a suit similar to the ones Poison would see every day as a BLI drone, and a little girl with a primary colored jacket that was about two sizes too large for her. They looked out of place among the Doctor’s collections of knicknacks, their City-straight posture collaged into the scene like a magazine cutout. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck no,” Kobra balked, and shook his head. “Get the fuck out of here before I shoot you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The rest of the Killjoys startled. This was totally out of character for Kobra. He rarely engaged with strangers, didn’t care much either way about Poison’s charity, and didn’t like to speak unless spoken to. It wasn’t even like he had a huge issue with City slickers, either: he’d liked his City job well enough and was completely ambivalent to the moral and ethical issues of BLI activities. They’d never heard him sound that </span>
  <em>
    <span>angry </span>
  </em>
  <span>either, especially with no provocation. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You owe me, Liu-Jiu,” the woman said, even keeled. She didn’t seem phased by Kobra’s outburst. If anything, she was amused by it. Was Liu-Jiu Kobra? That wasn’t his City name. How did she know him?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I paid that debt by not selling you the fuck out the first time, Wu-Si. My silence was definitely worth more than a fucking job transfer.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A job transfer that got you </span>
  <em>
    <span>out, </span>
  </em>
  <span>though.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So? You’re clearly out as well. Must not be that hard.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She shook her head slightly, flashing Kobra a smile that didn’t go near her eyes, and tossed him something she was holding. He held it up, and Party could see the back of a BLI ID card through his fingers. Kobra lifted his glasses to get an even closer look, inspecting the card so close to his face that it nearly touched his nose, and let out a low whistle. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck, really?” he asked her, and his voice had gone soft and sweet. Party felt like he’d been shoved to the back of the room, completely lost in following this interaction. He glanced at Jet and Ghoul beside them, and they both looked as lost as he was. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah. A week tops before I start rejecting. I’m all out of time on this side, bucko.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kobra stood still, and took in a deep, audible breath. He was upset, Party realised. He was seriously upset. Party hadn’t even realised he could </span>
  <em>
    <span>get </span>
  </em>
  <span>upset, Kobra crossed the room to the couch, crashing into the woman and hugging her tightly, giving her a deep kiss. Her hands immediately went into his hair, gripping onto his head for dear life. </span>
  <em>
    <span>This </span>
  </em>
  <span>is what Kobra looked like when he kissed someone he really loved, Party saw now. Getting jealous over the Yellow droid was stupid in retrospect, because that was clearly nothing to Kobra in comparison to this woman. After they’d embraced for a long minute, lost in each other, they reluctantly separated, and Kobra slid down to his knees next to the woman. She kept a hand on the back of his head, like she didn’t want to let go of him, and he just </span>
  <em>
    <span>let </span>
  </em>
  <span>her. He didn’t let anyone mess up his hair like that. Party’s skin burned with jealousy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hook me up, babes. I know you’ve got some on you,” she demanded, and that made Kobra laugh. His laugh was a rough bark, not hesitant, but foreign to even himself. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What happened to the whole ‘your body is a carefully balanced mechanism that you won’t sully with drugs’ thing?” he asked, but he unzipped his jacket and dug through the inner pockets as he said it. He brought out a container of Plus, and passed it up to her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The mechanism is already unbalanced, babes. No way I’m going to stop it from trying to kill off my internal organs one by one, might as well have a ball on the way down,” she said, moving her hand from the back of Kobra’s head to try and break open the Plus canister. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kobra pulled a face as he watched her struggle with the container for a moment, and then snatched it back from her, popping open the plastic with a practiced ease. “Gross. You don’t just port it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She dipped her finger into the thick black sludge that made up Plus, rubbing it on the inside of her gums and underneath her tongue. “Nah. I’m an N-model, remember? We got the shitty ports, it gets all gunked up when I direct take Plus.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yuck…” Kobra took his own scoop of the stuff, following her in rubbing it over the inside of his mouth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You want any?” the woman asked the girl, and Kobra offered the Plus to her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Before Party could say anything about giving </span>
  <em>
    <span>droid drugs </span>
  </em>
  <span>to a </span>
  <em>
    <span>child, </span>
  </em>
  <span>she declined, with a sweet little “no thanks, Wu-Si.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Probably for the best. This shit will rot your brain. Just look at Liu-Jiu. Fuck, saying that. Liu-Jiu, meet GK-ID:7233024.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey, Two Four,” Kobra said, crooning softly as he took the kid’s hand in his.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hello,” the girl replied, looking back at him with stars in her eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She’s wanted to meet you for a while,” Wu-Si said, “she loves hearing stories about her progenitor.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Wait. Kobra has a </span>
  <em>
    <span>daughter? </span>
  </em>
  <span>The girl looks to be five or six, which is a bit old for an unplanned pregnancy in the city. And no BLI drone would willingly start a family so early in their career. She was lighter than Wu-Si and Kobra both, but that could be through a combination of genetics lack of sun. Although Party would bet she was probably Black based on her dense curl pattern, which was tighter than Kobra’s and Wu-Si’s. Really, the only thing she had in common with Kobra was their matching undercuts. Kobra looked a lot more like Wu-Si than he did Two Four. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>While Wu-Si was all curves where obra was hard angles, and she was high energy smiles where Kobra was carefully blank, there was still something similar about them. Their lips curled in the same way, perhaps, and they styled their hair similarly, with peroxide bleached lengths swept up on top of their heads. (Although her hair was longer and left curlier than Kobra’s, a mullet where Kobra’s is more a poor attempt at a fauxhawk.) And, of course, they wore their oversized sunglasses in the exact same way. Did Kobra come from some secret sunglasses wearing cult?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m a big fan of your work on brain remapping and digigrafting,” the girl said, “everyone at the lad recommends your work as the gold star in brain work.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kobra snorted. “Thanks. Fuck knows organics can’t figure that shit out if there was a raygun at their heads. If they didn’t still use my work I would have to go back there myself to knock some sense into them.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Wu-Si laughed, clearly getting the joke. “Look at you guys, getting along already. I’m sure you’ll be mending the zones in no time.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There’s nothing else?” Kobra asked, and Wu-Si looked sad as she shook her head. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She can’t stay in the city. She’s too valuable to BLI, and when they figure out I’ve faked her death and destroyed enough of the research, they’ll come after me. I’m the only one who’s connected you to Kobra Kid as far as I know, but I don’t know how long that’ll last. I heard you were with Panopticon guys, though, so I guess I hoped Two Four would be better off with you guys for a little while. Just so you can show her the ropes of living here? I’ve tried, but I don’t know enough. She’s a smart learner, just tell her how to keep out of BLI’s sight and she’ll be fine from there.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I promise I’m an asset, Liu-Jiu,” Two Four looked down at Kobra with her big beautiful brown eyes, and Party’s heart broke. This poor kid. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course we’ll take care of her,” Party interjected, “you don’t have to worry.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kobra whipped around to glare at Party and hissed, “you don’t even know what you’re volunteering yourself for, dumbass. Shut the fuck up. I’ll take Two Four for a few months.” He turned back to the girl, and asked her: “No rejection problems, right? I can’t help you if your organics start failing. There’s no real equipment out here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nope!” she said, cheerfully, “I actually grow like an organic, too!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I dare say she’s even more advanced than you, Liu-Jiu, if your fragile little ego can handle that,” Wu-si joked, squeezing the back of his neck. “Thanks for taking her. I feel so much better going to DESTROYA now I know you’re there to watch out for her, and she can monitor you. Now all I have left to worry about is if DESTROYA will take me.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What the fuck do you mean I don’t know what I’m volunteering myself for?” Party huffed, “from where I’m standing you just said you’re going to fucking let a five year old roam around the desert alone in six months!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You are so fucking annoying, Poison,” Kobra snapped, and the venom in his voice made Jet take a half step forward to put himself between Kobra and Party.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well then? Please enlighten me, asshole, as to what </span>
  <em>
    <span>exactly </span>
  </em>
  <span>is going on here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s private! I don’t get in your face and ask you what it was like taking Korse up the ass, even though he’s trying to ghost us, now do I?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Party had to bite back the retort that was on his lips, because Jet’s iron grip on his elbow reminded him that yelling </span>
  <em>
    <span>I was the one who fucked Korse, thank you very much! </span>
  </em>
  <span>was not going to go down very well. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“C’mon, KK,” Ghoul said, voice soft and crooning, the way he would soothe a baby bird. “You know we’re your crew. We’re happy to take your kid — if she’s your family, she’s ours. But you need to explain this to us if there’s something we’re missing, okay?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She’s not my fucking kid —”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m okay talking about it, Liu Jiu,” Two Four said, “I don’t mind.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kobra looked at Wu-Si, and she shrugged. “I’m dead in a week, babes. I don’t give a fuck. I mean, you clearly told them nothing, so it’s on you if you want to share it, I guess. Not gonna get in on you and your personal shit.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck you all,” Kobra huffed, but he sounded less angry than before. “You especially, Wu-Si. You really love to come in and steal the spotlight from me, yet </span>
  <em>
    <span>again.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Last item on my bucket list, honey. You’re so cute when you scowl.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I hate you. Ugh. Fine. Okay. D’you have a display screen?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can do you one better, Kid.” Dr. D interrupted, “We got a whole computer bank underground. We can hook you up there.”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>you can find me on tumblr @ghoulgrass! i would love to chat with you about this fic!! i post drawings/headcanons/aesthetic posts and other things relating to this series.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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